Meta Moves Into Prediction Markets, Targeting Polymarket and Kalshi Partnerships While Building Its Own App
Mark Zuckerberg has directed internal teams to pursue deals with two of the leading prediction market platforms while simultaneously developing a competing product, according to people familiar with the matter. The move could reshape a sector that processed nearly $30 billion in bets in May 2026.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has instructed senior staff to explore partnerships with Polymarket and Kalshi, the New York Times reported on June 26, citing three employees with knowledge of the discussions. The outreach arrives alongside an internal project at Meta to build a standalone prediction market app codenamed "Arena," putting the social network, which counts 3.56 billion daily active users, on a potential collision course with platforms it is simultaneously courting.
The Arena App: What Is Known
Internal documents reviewed by NPR and CoinDesk describe Arena under at least two other working titles: "Antwerp" and "FBForecast." The app will use Meta's Llama artificial intelligence system to automatically generate prediction questions drawn from trending topics across sports, politics, entertainment, and world events.
Users will earn points rather than real money, a design choice that keeps the product outside immediate oversight by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates cash-settled event contracts. That regulatory buffer may be narrower than it appears: the CFTC published a 267-page proposed rulemaking on June 10 that could extend the agency's reach to points-based prediction products in future iterations.
Real-money wagering has not been ruled out for future versions. Meta has not confirmed a launch date. Internal descriptions call the project both "experimental" and a "top priority."
Arena is a rebuild of Meta's earlier "Forecast" app, a pandemic-era, points-based forecasting tool launched in 2020 that was shut down in 2022 after failing to attract a sustained user base. Arena repeats that points-based model rather than departing from it, at least in its current form.
The Platforms Meta Is Approaching
Polymarket, founded in 2020, operates on the Polygon blockchain and settles trades in USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin. The platform is currently transitioning to native USDC through a new partnership with Circle, infrastructure work that simplifies onboarding and could ease any future integration with Meta's systems. In March 2026, Polymarket also acquired Brahma, a DeFi infrastructure startup, to further reduce the complexity of its blockchain user experience. The company received a $2 billion funding commitment from Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, signaling substantial institutional backing ahead of any potential partnership discussions.
It recorded $10.57 billion in volume during March 2026 alone, its first month above the $10 billion mark, and has processed $33.5 billion year-to-date through June 25.
A single geopolitical contract, asking whether the United States would strike Iran before late February 2026, attracted $73 million in trading, the largest geopolitical contract in Polymarket's history.
Polymarket is available in roughly 180 countries but is explicitly banned for U.S. users. Users in India can access the platform only through a DNS or ISP workaround.
Kalshi operates differently. It is a federally regulated Designated Contract Market, the first platform licensed by the CFTC to offer event contracts to U.S. users.
It reached a $22 billion valuation in May 2026 following a $1 billion Series F led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest. Kalshi's total funding stands at $2.79 billion. Sports contracts drive more than 90 percent of its activity and accounted for 89 percent of its revenue in 2025.
When the Meta news broke earlier this week, secondary market trading in Kalshi's shares fell, according to CNBC.
Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket responded to press requests for comment on the reported partnership talks. Meta also did not respond to requests for comment.
Volume Context: A Market Expanding Fast
The sector these companies operate in has grown at a pace that is difficult to ignore. Trading volume on prediction markets climbed from under $5 billion per month in mid-2025 to nearly $24 billion in April 2026, when combined monthly volume for Polymarket and Kalshi reached approximately $24 billion. Total prediction market bets in May 2026 were estimated near $30 billion, a 588 percent increase year-over-year. Analyst Gautam Chhugani of Bernstein projects the global sector will process $240 billion in volume this year and could reach $1 trillion annually by 2030.
What This Means Outside the United States
Meta's distribution advantage is most consequential in markets where current prediction platforms have almost no reach. India has roughly 470 million Facebook users, the largest national user base on the platform globally. Nigeria's Facebook user base of around 40 to 42 million grew by 28 percent between 2022 and 2026, the fastest rate among the top 20 countries. Africa as a whole accounts for approximately 185 million monthly Facebook users, with growth running at around 6.5 to 7 percent annually, making it the fastest-growing region globally for Facebook.
These regions are already engaged with crypto broadly. South Asia was the fastest-growing crypto region globally during the first half of 2025, posting 80 percent year-over-year growth and around $300 billion in transaction volume over that period.
Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in on-chain value in the twelve months to June 2025, a 52 percent increase. Nigeria and Ethiopia both rank in the top 15 of the 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index, illustrating the depth of crypto penetration across the region.
Yet neither Polymarket nor Kalshi is genuinely accessible to most users in these markets. Polymarket requires a self-custodial crypto wallet and USDC deposits, and Indian users face additional ISP-level blocks that require workarounds. Kalshi requires a bank transfer and U.S. regulatory compliance.
Arena's points-based model removes those barriers entirely. As one analysis from iGaming Business noted, the app is designed so that a user scrolling Instagram could be funneled into a prediction game with a single tap and no financial setup required.
Legal analysts at ENS Africa have flagged that prediction markets currently sit at the intersection of at least three legal regimes in South Africa: crypto regulation, exchange control, and, potentially, derivatives law. India and Nigeria each face their own distinct regulatory gaps. In India, jurisdiction over prediction markets remains unclear between SEBI and the RBI, and Polymarket already faces ISP-level blocks. In Nigeria, crypto occupies a gray zone and the Securities and Exchange Commission has focused primarily on token issuances rather than event contracts.
Meta's points-based entry point may allow it to build a dominant position in these markets before local regulators establish any framework to address the product category. Researchers and privacy advocates have also noted that prediction market participation data, which can reveal users' political beliefs and financial risk appetite, represents a significant data sovereignty concern. That risk is especially acute in markets with weaker digital rights protections, given Meta's historically controversial data practices.
What Comes Next
The CFTC published a 267-page proposed rulemaking, titled "Prediction Markets; Public Interest Determinations," on June 10, signaling that U.S. regulators are moving toward a clearer framework. The White House has also been monitoring the CFTC's rulemaking process, according to CNBC, underscoring the political stakes of a rapidly expanding sector.
Congressional Democrats have separately urged the agency to address insider trading risks and limit sports wagering on these platforms. Their concerns gained concrete grounding in April 2026, when the CFTC brought an enforcement action against political candidates who had wagered on their own campaigns through Kalshi, the first such action in the prediction market space.
For Web3 builders, the central question is whether a Meta partnership with Polymarket would bring Polygon and USDC infrastructure to billions of users, or whether Arena will remain a fully centralized product that competes with decentralized platforms on distribution alone. For developers and users in South Asia and Africa, the same question carries additional weight: whether a Meta-mediated prediction market accelerates local DeFi adoption or bypasses it entirely. No launch date, partnership terms, or blockchain integration details have been confirmed.